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Fiddling with DV while Burma dies

The earthquake in Sichuan has displaced the Burmese cyclone disaster from the news and invites grim death toll comparisons. Unfortunately, the Burmese government is showing no ability to cope with the disaster on their own, nor are they allowing much outside help in.

In this post, we publish two eye witness accounts of the cyclone disaster sent to Danwei by a Burmese citizen and by an American in Rangoon / Yangon. Both must remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

The second article by the American describes the storm and goes into some detail about the aftermath, including the author's attempts to distribute aid in the countryside outside of Rangoon.

Below is an extract about one such aid mission from the American's account; it explains the photograph reproduced above (taken by the author):

We passed one village en route that had a small red cross flag in a shack with many people waiting outside. Our convoy stopped and we found out they were distributing a very small amount of rice and milk to the villagers. This was a good place to donate some of our goods. As soon as we stopped a crowd of several hundred came around us and we began to fear a riot. In the chaos, we tried to organize the distribution.

In the midst of all this we suddenly found a soldier and perhaps military informant filming us. One had a video camera and the other was taking stills. This was more harassment to prevent aid from getting through, and at first sight of them (we had later realized they'd been tailing us for some time on motorbike), half our party stayed in the cars for fear of having their faces picked up and sent to who knows where else. The image of the authorities doing nothing to help starving and homeless people but instead pushing them aside to film us was burned into my mind.

Thanks for worrying about me and people from Burma. No one thought that this would happen in Burma. It was the first time in Burma at least within 70 years.

My mom said that was the first time in her life that she had seen the wind like this.

It was about 00:10 and we all were asleep though one of my friends had told me that a cyclone could come to Rangoon. We thought that it would be only like 50-70 mph as the weather report from the government-run media. Then, we heard the sound of wind.
Taking the roofs one by one. The palm trees were about to fall down and all of the mangoes from the tree falling down. We had been thinking that it would go away and get weaker within a couple of hours.

By 3:30 in the morning, the roof of my neighbors and the satellite dish were falling down. I was asleep when I heard the sound of "Buunnggg" from my roof. I could see outside from the window of my bedroom. The sky was like someone dropped red ink on it. It was light like dawn though it was only 3:30 in the morning. I got message from my friend that a big storm was in Irrawaddy Division with a speed of over 100 mph. We knew that people from that area would be crushed away.

About 5:30 in the morning, one of my neighbor's roof was totally gone and there were trees and leaves on the road. We all were praying to stop the storm. But our prayers weren't heard by the heaven. About 6:30 I heard my mom crying for us to come and shut the windows. I heard my sisters shouting to get some cloth to mop up water. The wind was blowing U-turn. From 00:10 to 05:30, the wind was blowing east to west and at 06:30 the wind was west to east. All the trees were falling down and there was heavy rain with the wind. Some families were soaked in their houses and there was nothing they could do.